Mini Master Chefs

Mixing precocious kids and competitive cooking might sound like an exploitative fusion, or at least a pandering one, like putting lobster and truffles in the same dish. But I’d like to meet the stolid skeptic who has not been won over by the talented cooks, ages eight to thirteen, who compete on Fox’s spinoff series “MasterChef Junior.” Slow to get with the program (the finale airs tonight, with a cook-off between finalists Alexander, thirteen, and Dara, twelve), I binge-watched the first six episodes earlier this week, gurgling with pleasure at the sight of the mini-chefs rouladeing, souffleing, chiffonadeing, and—like the budding pros they are—yipping “Yes, Chef!” in response to the show’s host, Gordon Ramsay.

One of the most delightful things about “Junior” is watching Ramsay, television’s premier asshole chef, soften like a pat of butter in the presence of the young contestants. He whispers tips to Dara about how to make a soufflé rise. He rushes to console a tearful Sofia, and helps her remake a ruined layer-cake batter. He confides to ten-year-old Jack, who is from East Rockaway and looks like a cute, shrunken Jewish dad, that tasting his vanilla cake with meringue buttercream makes him feel less homesick for his own son named Jack. Along with his co-hosts, Joe Bastianich and Graham Elliot, Ramsay even lets the contestants test the whippedness of whipped cream by turning a bowl of it over his head (spoiler: not whipped). The show is worth watching just to see the notorious ballbuster tenderized, and the irritatingly macho cooking-competition genre turned disarmingly mild and humane. The kids offer each other hugs and high-fives of support, tear up before the judges, giddily celebrate their victories, and retain remarkably positive attitudes toward the competition and their fellow competitors, even if the “restaurant takeover” challenge did get as surly as the grown-up version.

The diminutive chefs reinvigorate other tired cooking-show conventions, too. Foodie pretension becomes funny and charming when contestant Nathan, an eight-year-old ham, says he considers his palate “very sophisticated.” Celebrity-chef fashion is rescued from its abiding lameness by Jack’s collection of Hawaiian-print shirts, and by Dara’s colorful headbands with oversized bows. Even food descriptors, those perilously toothsome adjectives, feel fresh and unexpected when, for example, tiny nine-year-old Sarah, the youngest competitor to make it past the first round, describes blue cheese as tasting “feety-ish,” or Troy, a twelve year old with choppy bangs and formidable chops, says that a spicy steak rub “blows up in your mouth.”

A few of my favorite challenges so far have tested the contestants’ still immature taste buds. In the fourth episode, they were each given a “mystery box” filled with kid-nightmare food: offal, spikey green vegetables, feety-ish cheese. They groaned and wrinkled their noses, then gamely whipped up beautiful dishes like snail chowder, date cake, deep-fried kidneys, and a perfect plateful of simple, whole-fried sardines. In a later episode, the quietly brilliant Alexander, who dominated much of the competition, and is the favorite to win tonight, had to cook with chicken livers for the first time, and discovered that they’re delicious. His proud announcement to Ramsay (“I really like it!”) was a reminder that small, transformative moments happen whenever kids get involved in cooking, whether or not they’re fledgling Master Chefs.

The “Junior” contestants are hugely talented cooks—staggeringly so, when you consider their age—but they are not prodigies like the ones in the movies “Spellbound” or “First Position,” or disciplined little machines like the ones in YouTube videos of North Korean kids playing guitar. A few of them, you get the sense, come from privileged families who weaned them on rarified treats. (Roen, twelve, says that he’s been eating octopus since he was, like, three, and Sofia’s mom is a chef and restaurateur.) Because of the casting process, all the kids come from the East or West coasts. But the majority seem like more ordinary products of the times: kids who grew up in an era of the Food Network and “Top Chef,” when once-exotic ingredients are commonplace, and caring about food is considered cool. Whereas past generations of young cooks went overseas to cultivate their culinary sensibilities, these junior chefs are mastering our own country’s gastronomy. Many of them borrow flavors from Italy, Latin America, and Asia (Dara follows a family recipe to make pickles for her soy-glazed chicken wings), but all of them cook in a style that is recognizably New American. With their elevated comfort food and aspirations of one day being both restaurant owners and “MasterChef” judges, they may be our first generation of truly homegrown gourmets.